


films about ghosts

by tomatocages (kittu9)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Psychological Trauma, Team Dynamics, everyone probably has PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-05
Updated: 2011-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/tomatocages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s no way they are going to just get over this. Post-<i>Failsafe</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	films about ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> _Failsafe_ destroyed me as a person. UGH, THIS SHOW.

Even her raw relief at seeing Artemis alive again has not healed over the wound in M’gann’s mind; to make matters worse, which M’gann did not think was possible, Artemis creeps out of the mountain after their debriefing, head bowed and shoulders tense, while M’gann still weeps and the others avoid looking anyone in the eye. As soon as Artemis is out of telepathic range M’gann goes stiff with remembered pain and terror and they all feel it reverberate through their skulls, wordless and horrible until Wally digs out his phone and awkwardly scrolls through his contacts list and calls Artemis’ number three times in quick succession. She finally picks up the phone the last time and snarls at him, but he puts her on speakerphone and they all cluster around and beg her to talk to them, to say anything. M’gann can’t even speak, she just reaches out and rubs her fingers over the tiny microphone and lets the static say everything.  
   
Artemis ends up talking them through the finer points of feathering combat arrows, and after that about how to rewire explosive arrowheads, until Wally’s battery is treacherously low and her voice is hoarse and M’gann has finally, finally stopped shaking. At some point during all this, Captain Marvel makes them snacks that even Wally does not touch, and Conner finds it in himself to reach out and thread M’gann’s fingers through his own—his palm is solid and warm against hers and she clings to him, she can’t even say a word through the link: they are all of them greedy for the sound of Artemis’ voice, the familiar cadences and speech patterns overlaid with ambient noise and the fuzzy sound that speakerphone always imparts.  
   
It’s the worst Friday night on record, and after they get off the phone with Artemis everyone curls up on the couch—even Wolf, despite what Red Tornado always says about animal hair on the furniture—and they watch No Signal until Robin and Wally and Kaldur all go home. Uncle J’onn, who has been flitting anxiously around the caves all this time, ushers M’gann up to her room and reminds her to meditate.  
   
All she can think of when he bends to kiss her forehead is the horrible moment when he looked her in the eye and put his fist through her heart: his mind had been clean and sudden, like this last hurt was a mercy.  
   
The worst part is that even with mediation, the scenario stays inside her head, looping endlessly until M’gann cannot find peace. She lies awake in her bed, eyes open and not really seeing the cool dark planes of the ceiling: flat on her back, body limp, she feels like she’s back on the slab and being threatened, like her mind will swallow up the whole mountain and bury her within the rubble, and no one will ever be safe again. Every time she blinks she sees a red wash of color, sees the bright skeletons of her team shining in the light of battle, feels the sick disconnect of the bioship existing and then not existing, remembers how hollow the last moments of the dream were: her eyes felt as though they had been made of glass and she could not close them, could not stop seeing the utter destruction of the Earth she loved.  
   
M’gann thinks this remorseful day has destroyed many things, and underneath the sense-memory of every death, she is terrified of what could happen if her teammates really do die—and they will, she knows it, everything must come to an end, but until now the thought had been very far away and easily kept at bay by any number of small things. She is scared the team will never be whole again, that her mind might destroy them without her ever knowing. Perhaps M’gann will become so great a threat that her uncle really will have to kill her; perhaps he will take her to a deserted place and density-shift deep into the stone heart of a mountain and leave her there, unseeing and unfeeling and insensate until her mind collapses in on itself.  
   
She would deserve such an end, M’gann thinks. Oh. She is afraid.  
   
*  
   
There is no way Artemis is going to sleep tonight, so she stays up and dismantles her bow, going over every mechanism with a magnifier and a cotton swab dipped in cleaning solution. She’s not surprised when her phone rings at two twenty-seven in the morning, because if she is awake after having seen and felt so little, her teammates (she loves the taste of that word in her mouth) are likely awake as well.  
   
“So, that was weird,” Wally says when she picks up, and Artemis is a little annoyed at how blasé he’s trying to sound. Ugh, if this conversation goes as long as the speakerphone thing did earlier, she will be out of minutes way before the end of the month.  
   
“I don’t remember too much,” is all she says, fiddling with one of the bowstring pulleys. “I guess I died and that fucked everything up. So, note to self: get better at running away from homicidal aliens.”  
   
Wally’s quiet for such a long span of time that Artemis knows she went a little too far. She’s not used to being gentle with him. “Wall-man? You still there?”  
   
“Yeah,” he says, and he sounds funny, like he’s choking on something. God, he makes her tired; Artemis closes her eyes and presses the phone closer to her ear, hunkering down on the floor of her room, ignoring the bow across her lap. “God. I’m glad you didn’t really die.”  
   
“Me too,” she says. She is not going to make fun of him, not when he sounds like he’s confessing. “Meg was really upset. That exercise really messed with her head.”  
   
“And that messed with all of us,” Wally says. “I know it was all an alternate reality, but I can’t stop thinking about it. It felt really real, you know?”  
   
She does know; even though that scenario was basically a dream, she remembers dying, remembers the moment where everything was beautiful and everything hurt, the light that caught her dazzling and savage. It’s haunting even now, awake. “Are you okay, Wally?” She wouldn’t normally ask, but it’s almost three in the morning and this conversation feels so much less real than this afternoon.  
   
“I don’t think I can take being at home right now,” he says, as though he doesn’t have a curfew or something. “I called Rob already, we’re going back to the cave.”  
   
“Is this an invitation?”  
   
“Goes without saying,” he says, and he sounds a little more like his old, obnoxious self. She’s relieved. “I know you’re, like, a certified expert at sneaking out—do you attend the same ninja academy as my friend Robin, and if so, _may_ I have the name of your instructor?—but, I don’t know, texting an invite seemed so gauche.”  
   
“I don’t have texting,” she says, like she says every time he texts her in class and she gets charged twenty cents. “I’ll see you there, just let me restring my bow.”  
   
“Bring it with, we could use a demo,” he says, and continues on, so breezily she _knows_ something’s wrong, “hey, Artemis? We’re okay. You’re okay. I’m… glad you’re okay.”  
   
“Oh my god, just shut up already,” she says, but she’s laughing a little, and, wow, she does feel kind of better. She gathers up her bow and gets her coat, and she’s out her window before her clock radio’s numbers can click over to three.  
   
*  
   
Conner didn’t go up to his room when the Martian Manhunter led M’gann upstairs; he’s too anxious and un-tired to sleep, and his room is too small for Wolf, so he’s slumped on the couch, letting Wolf lick his arm and listening to M’gann cry, both through the walls and through the link. He’s pretty sure he’s the only one who can hear her over the link, because the feeling has such a soft touch, one he only notices when she’s talking to him alone; and, more to the point, there’s no one else around. The Manhunter tried to talk to Conner before he left, but Conner was still feeling to ugly and unsettled inside, and the only way he was staying calm was by focusing on No Signal and the echo of M’gann’s voice in his head before he’d died, telling him she loved him. That hadn’t been so bad, but everything else had been terrible and he can’t help dwelling on it.  
   
It’s a little after three when Robin and Wally and Artemis show up, and they don’t even say anything, they just sit next to him on the couch, way closer than anyone usually does. Kaldur comes in twenty minutes later and puts his hand on Conner’s shoulder for second, like he’s sorry; Conner’s okay with that, personal space feels like the weirdest and loneliest thing after what happened today, and if M’gann weren’t up in her room, he’d want to be as close to her as possible.  
   
“M’gann’s in her room,” he says, because he feels like he should say something, even if he doesn’t know what it is. He hesitates before adding, “she’s still crying.”  
   
Artemis has her bow across her lap but she’s not really working on it; she’s pressed close between Wally and Kaldur, looking about as adrift as Conner feels, though he could be wrong, he’s not very good at reading her. “Well,” she drawls, sounding like she usually does when she’s calling Wally out for being stupid, “guess I’m up.” She gets up off the couch and kind of salutes before sauntering out of the room, and Conner listens to her feet on the stairs as she makes her way to M’gann’s room. She comes back down inside of ten minutes, leading M’gann.  
   
Conner still feels awkward and clumsy around her, but he stands up and before he’s taken three steps, M’gann makes a quick, darting movement towards him and she’s in his arms. “I’m sorry,” she says, like those are the only words she knows in this language. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”  
   
They all huddle even closer on the couch when Conner sits back down, drawing M’gann into his lap. Kaldur reaches over and puts his hand on M’gann’s shoulder, the same way he put his hand on Conner’s shoulder earlier, comforting; Conner focuses on the way the webbing between Kaldur’s fingers lays softly over M’gann’s sleeve, semi-opaque and threaded through with tiny veins, and wonders if he shouldn’t have just touched M’gann’s shoulder, instead of holding her; he doesn’t actually know if her being so close to him is helpful, but he’s not about to let her go. She might not be speaking to him over the link, but he can still feel today’s events roiling over and over in her mind.  
   
Artemis presses up close against Conner’s side and puts her hand on M’gann’s back, rubbing slow circles; Wally pushes close against her and Robin and Wolf sit on the floor, leaning against Conner’s shins.  
   
“I could have killed all of you,” M’gann says. Her face is pressed into his shirt and Conner can feel her mouth moving against the cotton, the fabric catching on her lip. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think—”  
   
“M’gann,” Kaldur says, and Conner is grateful, because Kaldur always knows what to say, “what happened today was unfortunate. But we all have lived to tell the tale.”  
   
“If something like this ever really happens,” she says, a little wildly, lifting her face from his chest, “I can’t promise I won’t go crazy. I didn’t know it would happen this time, and I don’t know how to keep it from happening again!” She pushes away from all of them, a little, but Kaldur keeps his hand on her shoulder and Artemis keeps rubbing M’gann’s back. “Maybe I should go back to Mars,” she says, and she sounds about as helpless as Conner feels at the thought.  
   
“Hello, Megan,” Artemis says. “You really shouldn’t. Maybe today was a good thing. Training exercise, right? So it went really, really wrong. But now we know that in event of the apocalypse, anything terrible has to get thought you first, and I personally do not envy whoever that is.”  
   
“We also know that if Artemis really dies, we’re screwed,” Robin points out. “I think we can safely say that it would be just overwhelming. No joke.” Wally kicks him, but since he’s sitting kind of far away, he hits Artemis instead. She backhands him, but gently, and kicks Robin herself; no one bothers telling them to settle, and Conner’s glad, because it’s normal and funny.   
   
“We are a team,” Kaldur says. “We have many weaknesses, but our dependence upon each other is also a great strength. You need not be ashamed of your feelings.”  
   
“It’s kind of a compliment, anyway,” Wally says, but his face is still shocky white under the freckles, and he doesn’t sound as cheerful as he normally does. “I mean, you’re the champion of your freakin’ planet, and you’re lost without us. Consider _me_ flattered,”  
   
“I _am_ lost without you,” M’gann says, but she doesn’t sound nearly as upset as she did before. Conner can feel her heart beating against his chest, and the low sound of it is slowing from a rate of panic to something more normal. “I’m sorry I couldn’t let you guys go.”  
   
“You don’t have to apologize,” Conner finally finds his voice. “We’re in this together.” He slouches and looks her in the eye; she meets his gaze and flushes a little, high along her cheekbones. It’s a good look for her, and Conner really prefers it to the stunned, blank expression she’d had in the alternate reality; it has the side-effect of making him want to kiss her, which is unfortunate only because the entire team is in the room.  
   
“If you’re sorry, then I’m sorry,” Artemis says, half gentle and half wry. “What was I thinking, getting killed like that? It’s as though the scenario was set up so we’d fail or something.”  
   
“Seriously,” Wally says, “the Kobayashi Maru has nothing on today’s shit.”  
   
“Nerd alert!” Robin says, “though I do agree with you on this one, buddy.”  
   
“Oh my God, how many times do I have to tell you that Star Trek is _mainstream culture_ now.”  
   
“Nerd alert,” Artemis says.  
   
Kaldur laughs, low and deep, and rises from the couch, only to return with an armload of blankets from the linen cabinet. “If we intend to spend the night here, I suggest we alter the space so that we are more comfortable.”  
   
“I am hideously uncomfortable,” Robin announcess, although he’s practically lying on top of Wolf now. “And we should just stay up, because it’s almost breakfast time and I could really go for some flapjacks. ”  
   
“Are you hungry?” Conner asks M’gann.  
   
“Yes,” Wally says. “Ow! Artemis!”  
   
M’gann laughs, and Conner can finally feel the first glimmers of relief, of joy, through the link; she sounds hopeful, even if she is still upset and afraid. He’s glad; he can’t protect her from this, even if she’d let him.  
   
“I read somewhere that diners are an important element of American culture,” she says in a fair imitation her usual cheer. “I’ve wanted to go to one for a long time.”  
   
“Let us go together,” Kaldur says. Wally’s on his feet in seconds, which is slow for him, and they all have to hunt for the wad of twenties that Black Canary left in the cave for petty cash after Robin looks up diners on Yelp and figures out that Bibbo’s in Metropolis has highly-rated doughnuts and doesn’t take debit.  
   
They’re all bleary-eyed with sleep and the remains of their earlier communal adrenaline rush by the time they take the transporter to Metropolis and stumble into a booth that barely fits the six of them. It’s still good to be pressed so close against his teammates, so Conner doesn’t mind too much, even if Artemis keeps trying to kick Wally under the table, and missing. M’gann’s squished in between him and Kaldur, which helps.  
   
He’s not stupid enough to think everything is going to be okay now, even with a judicious application of hash browns, eggs and bacon; all of them still have a skittish, pained look about them and he heard what the Manhunter said about M’gann’s powers. But maybe, for now, this is enough: maybe they can become strong enough, controlled enough to overcome even the most unwinnable of situations.  
   
Conner reaches for M’gann’s hand and holds it under the table, eating his apple pie with his left hand so he doesn’t have to let her go. She keeps talking to Artemis and doesn’t look at him, but he can see her smiling out of the corner of his eye, and he can feel the sweet, shy swell of contentment rising in her mind. Conner’s not much good at this sort of thing, but he wants desperately for her to be all right. For all of them to be all right.  He will fight for this, which means there is hope.   



End file.
